executor485

I'm sure you have seen Road Runner, which is probably my favorite of them all... But its got a very good config/UI for setting the program up. My only compliant is that there are some things that you have to make work-arounds for. Some of the external nav programs will not always skin properly, and if they do, you lack some of the abilities of RR. But that could just be a skinning issue rather than an RR issue as well.
But will the interface be simplistic like RR, will it be easier, will it possibly auto detect some of the presets that you may have? I'll give you an example. Lets say you want to use VLC for your movies and music rather than WMP or winamp, and you want to use iguidance for your nav. You have these applications already installed... Will it be intelligent enough to detect that you have those and suggest/ask if you want them to integrate with the FE?
Reason I ask is for a matter of one click install that will run straight away with 0 configuration. Just makes it simple for lazy/noobs...
Oh, one last thing... Might not be possible... But maybe have an option in the config to make the FE as your shell? Just like a selectable option that will make it the shell and when you unselect it, explorer becomes the shell again. Just an idea

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ZanGManN

yeah Centrafuse has this feature and I believe its an easy thing to add so it shouldnt be a problem. We are amassing a list of features to fiddle around with and I read through that thread you suggested in and added some of your ideas.

Hardest part is making everyone happy.
We appreciate your feedback mate.

I dont know about your idea about the auto-integrating preinstalled programs that you already have. Mainly because you would have to cover the entire spectrum and program them individually into the program.. and that's just too many programs. Hopefully though a good interface would entice you enough to uninstall WMP and winamp and only use it by itself.

ZanGManN

We wanted to give you guys an little update on how progress is going so far. First, here are a few concept images. The home interface will be similar to that of iDrive's, but that's about it.

Home Screen


Entertainment Main Menu


Communications Main Menu


Alternate Colors. More will be available upon release.



We plan to implement all of the features available from other carpc media centers out there as well, but also include features not really seen yet, some of which are smooth animation, moving backgrounds, transparencies and ability to handle gigantic file libraries without skipping a beat. If you are really interested we are massing a wiki as we progress that will have all of the latest information available as we develop more.

http://carma.no-tec.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

Oh yeah, the working name of the project is CarMa [like Karma...]

We hope you guys will enjoy it!

SuperJ

Glad to see another front end come about. My biggest gripe about the front ends available right now is that they're so full of clutter it's almost dangerous to operate in traffic. They also look bland and amatuerishly made. So far CaveLive is the best looking, fastest, and most stable FE I've used so far but being in Germany they don't have satnav, satradio, or hdradio controlls built in. I'd suggest taking a look at what they've done from an aesthetics/usability standpoint with their Live skin as they've hit the nail on the head IMO. A visual EQ like they have running on the main page would be nice too.

NSFW

That looks great - I really like the idea of having only a few UI elements on each screen.

I completely agree with SuperJ's point about existing FE's being too cluttered.

TMF

Cool, more Delphi coders! Are any of you posting the code for these so we can help?

I thought about reverse engineering RoadRunner from VB but I think starting from scratch would be better. And I like the idea of scripting in Pascal too. I've done a lot of work with state machines and using pascal as a driver for other programs I'v written.

And finally, I do like the idea of using Winamp as a backend to playing the mp3s and visualizations. There are tons of plugins for winamp that you really don't want to reinvent that wheel.

I look forward to seeing what becomes of this thread.

Cheers

John

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ZanGManN

While I agree that the a cleaner interface is a lot easier to use read, you run into an issue of how many features do you want to include with the program. More features = more clutter. It's really a fine line and it can be tough to make everyone happy. You have to try to make everyone happy, the people who just want to play music from a harddrive, to the people who want to map nav, use satellite radios and surf on firefox. We're going to try our best and use everyones feedback from these threads and forums and see what we can come up with.

executor485

Just my thoughts, but the best way to make everyone happy... Would be to make all the features and then in the config menu, allow them to disable anything they dont want/need.

So if someone doesnt use it as a satellite radio or tv, etc. They can disable those, they wont show up on the menu and bob's your uncle. That way the advanced users can put everything they want in, and the people who want it simple can make it just that.

Unfortunately that has some issues with skinning possibly. But it could be done. Something along the lines of making just a background, all the buttons, and probably some different main menu's. Or way advanced - make it so you can drag your buttons and components onto the screen in a skin builder, that way people can customize where they want the buttons, and what buttons they do and dont want. But those are just some ideas there and pretty difficult to implement without having a lot of possibilities of errors in the code and all

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ZanGManN

Yeah it'd be really cool to have an option to "unlock" the buttons, where a user could enter "editing mode" and they could delete buttons or drag them around or add more and than relock them all. Kind of like the Dashboard on OSX, or how google did iGoogle. That's a pretty cool idea man, let me look into that.

dhantiflag

hey man, looking great!!! can't wait to see more, if you need some help ever let me know.. id be glad to help with this.

can't wait!

executor485

If I knew more C programming I'd love to help, but alas... My job wont pay for any training, so I'm stuck with HTML and Flash/actionscript for the most part with self learning of anything else I want. lol

I really like how clean the front page example looks. Bring up seperate menu's for each major category, really sharp. Look forward to seeing it work and helping test

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NSFW

You can get around that, to some extent, by thinking of it as "more features = more screens." Here's how I'd approach it:

Set aside a little bit of real estate on every screen for the most-frequently-used tasks, like volume +/-, mute, and retuning to the previous screen. And put those buttons on the same place on every screen so the user never had to hunt for them.

Then look at the next-most-frequent tasks, and try to make those only 1 clicks away from the main screen. For example, GPS, choosing a playlist, choosing a cellphone contact to call. The media & cellphone pages would just be a listbox plus a big "play" or "call" button. Also add a couple buttons to access more features for media or phone stuff.

For phones, one of those extra button could let you dial a number on a kepad. For media, one button let you choose a specific track to play or add to the current playlist; and button could remove the current track from the current paylist. At that point it makes sense to put more UI elements on each screen.

There are more features that would be useful of course, but my point is that frequently-used stuff should be 1-2 clicks from the main screen, and less-frequently-used stuff should be hidden 3-4 clicks away. Yes it adds more clicks to do those things, but the alternative is to clutter the UI with buttons that are rarely used. I'd much rather be able to do the frequent tasks (choose playlist, dial contact, bring up the GPS) with a minimum of clicks or clutter, so I don't even have to take my eyes off the road. For anything else I'm willing to wait 'til I come to a stoplight, and dig through the screens a bit.

executor485

^
What he said...

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ZanGManN

NSFW you make some good points. I will try and implement it like this and keep it as simple as possible and put in advanced features on alternate screens. Good lookin out man.

Here is a little Idea we are playing with now



To be quick, the concept is that the footer will be hidden until the user presses some sort of [hidden] button neat the bottom at which point it will slide up, which will house your volume, play, ff, etc buttons. When you are done it will slide down. The mini header you see here, once media is playing, will be shown at all times, and again, a simple mouse press up there will extend that header down to show a more detailed view.

The volume bar will be a slide bar similar to that of windows, and there will be a universal "home" orb button that will take the user to one of the 4 categories, or all the way back to the original home page. It will be in the header as of right now and not in the footer as shown here.

The heart icon will be the users ranking of files. Broken heart, full heart and empty heart.

-we will also have dynamically generated playlists similiar to itunes does. "most played" "recently added" "heart ranked" etc.

So what do you guys think of those few new features so far?

[edit: this screen shot doesnt pertain to the text anymore, sorry about that. things have been updated]

colin

I love the footer idea, mostly beacuse I did the exact same thing
I think, however, that if the header is to be permanent, then the rest of the skin (those 4 buttons) should be resized to fit in the new space available. It isn't fair that Navigation gets more room than Utilities.

That's my opinion but damn that looks clever. Very professional and sophisticated, factory-like.

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